This blog covers financial, political and other topics the author gets the urge to write about. It does not provide personal financial, legal or other advice. Consider consulting a personal professional adviser before making any decisions. Copyright (c) 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 by Leonard W. Wang. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

The most important legislative priorities of the Trump administration--tax and health insurance reform--will be enacted within a matter of months. Both of these measures will greatly impact the working class whites who propelled Trump to the White House--either for better or for worse.

Preliminary assessments of the proposed tax reform indicate that taxes for the middle class will drop about a couple hundred dollars. One percenters can look forward to many thousands in tax savings. This isn't exactly what folks in small town America were hoping for. To make up for the loss of income tax revenues from these cuts, the President may endorse a border adjustment tax (basically, a tariff on imports that would likely increase the prices of the inexpensive food and goods that low and moderate income Americans rely on). To many, this might feel like another kick in the teeth.

Health insurance reform is turning out to be a very tough nut to crack. President Trump has said he wants to preserve the protections that many low and moderate income Americans count on--guaranteed acceptance, coverage against pre-existing medical conditions, and subsidies for those unable to pay full freight. But these conditions are very expensive. How will the President cover the costs? There seems to be little consideration of progressive taxation of the wealthy or increasing the federal debt. Yet there's no free lunch. One possible "solution," so to speak, would be to offer low cost policies with skimpy coverage--prior medical conditions would be covered but total coverage might go only up to $25,000 or $50,000 a year. This would be expedient, but would effectively deprive people of coverage when they needed it the most.

On top of this, the President's desire to turn Medicaid into a program of block grants for the states has significant potential to reduce coverage for the low income. Many of these people voted for him. Where will they go for care without health insurance? Medicaid covers around 74 million Americans--almost 1 in 4. Cuts to this program could mean many millions of people mad at the President.

President Trump's problems are exacerbated by his proposal to increase military spending by $54 billion. Where will this money come from? The Republicans in Congress won't agree to more deficit spending. So the President can either raise taxes, or piss off many millions of voters by cutting other federal programs.

Donald Trump is President at a time when stark choices are necessary. He was elected as an insurgent. But he's stacked his cabinet with establishment Republican types, people who have no demonstrated concern or sympathy for his core constituents. The Republicans who control Congress gave him scant and faint-hearted support during his campaign. But today they stack the legislative agenda with bills that would make the rich richer and offer the working class hardly more than a crumb or two--and stale ones at that.

If the President really wants to help his constituents, he'll have to be a traitor to his class. He'll have to offer substantial improvements in life to the working class, and sorry to say, but wealthier people will have to pay for them. America got itself into its current mess by believing that somehow everyone can get more of everything all the time at no cost to anyone else. The last two large nations to subscribe to this notion--the Soviet Union and Communist China--had to abandon their illusions and now struggle with the consequences of the their wishful thinking.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the greatest President of the Twentieth Century, was labelled a traitor to his class. And he was. He endorsed legislation like Social Security and a strengthening of protections for workers and labor unions that uplifted many millions of ordinary Americans out of poverty and into the middle class. The cost was born to a large degree by a sharp increase in federal income taxes paid by the well-to-do. The rich grumbled and plotted against him. But he ushered in the prosperity of the 1950's and 1960's, now viewed as a golden age in America. America's perceived decline from those days also correspond with ever increasing inequality of wealth and income. If Donald Trump really wants to make America great again, he'll have to make it great for the working class. That isn't the direction he's been going in since his inauguration. The next few months, when his most consequential legislative initiatives will be enacted, will likely make him both a traitor--either to his core constituents or to his class--and a hero--to the wealthy, many of whom didn't support him but are glad to free-ride on his policies and program, or to the working class that vaulted him into office. The choice is his.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

If there's one notable feature of investing in the nascent Trump Presidency, it's uncertainty. Although macroeconomic statistics are generally good, we are startled every day by a spinning kaleidoscope of tweets, leaks, executive orders, allegations, innuendoes, news stories, fake news stories and occasional court rulings that splatter across our field of vision and further contort the cognitive dissonance in the political scene from the recent election. When all news and news-substitutes seem to be open to challenge, what can an investor rely on?

The ever-rising market only makes things worse. With such political confusion, it's far from clear that the economic and tax policies espoused by President Trump will be implemented any time soon. Why does the market persistently climb higher? One can only suspect that some market participants have conflated optimism with delusion. The background music to today's market may not be the Grand March from Aida (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX0qN6QEvGg), but rather Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJunCsrhJjg).

What can an investor make of all this? Bear in mind that you can't see a lot of what's going on in the market. There are major undercurrents, often computer driven, that cause daily market schizophrenia. Large investors can push the market one way or another in the course of making large purchases or unwinding large holdings. Mom and Pop investors won't see this or hear about, except maybe after the fact.

Computerized trading can be particularly scary. It no longer consists of following pre-determined algorithms. Much of today's computerized trading is dynamic, using artificial intelligence-type programs that try to figure out as the trading day progresses where prices are headed and buy or sell to take advantage of the anticipated market move. Since much of the trading these programs are observing is done by other computers, we have computers reacting to other computers. Price, which traditionally has been a judgment call made by intuitive and irrational humans, is now the product of chains of logic. That logic tends to respond to short term stimuli, such as price movements in the last few minutes, seconds and even milliseconds. It doesn't factor in the uncertainty in Washington.

People know the future is cloudy. But the computers don't. Computers don't feel fear, nor do they have to save for retirement or build up a cash reserve to guard against a layoff or a large unexpected expense. People may hold onto their cash, wondering if the market is too bubbling given the chaos in the White House. But a computer may boldly keep buying, egged on by the trades of the past 20 milliseconds.

If you're hesitant about the market, keep your powder dry and your cash in an FDIC guaranteed bank account. There's no computer program that can understand and explain Donald Trump. Today's stock market may be too heavily driven by short term inputs, without a full understanding of longer term risks. Remember the old computer adage: garbage in, garbage out. If today's computerized trading is pushing the market up based on an incomplete picture, prices will eventually rise too far, if they haven't already. Then, le deluge.

Please read

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Tale of the Magic Dragon

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